'In the beginning, America was in the way'. Only slowly did 16th-century Englishmen turn from the chimera of a short-cut to Asia's riches to the vision of precious metals to be mined and colonies planted in the New World.

Paul Preston and Helen Graham discuss the tension developing in the Europe of the 30s as the Left attempted to unite against the growth of Fascism and the bloody timetable of political collapse, uprisings and mutiny that transformed a half-successful coup d'etat into a protracted civil war.